Hitting Close To Home

By Drew Budd

I first met Mike DeRosa on what was only his second day on the job as Bridgehampton athletic director and physical education and health teacher in September 2017. We met in his office for a running series called “Inside the A.D.’s office,” which is a question-and-answer format article that we ran — and still do when we have a new athletic director in our coverage area — for the public to get to know a new administrator in their district.

Mike and I got to learn a lot of things about each other that day. First off, we were the same age, both born in the greatest year of all time, 1984. He was born in March, I was born in August. We both graduated high school the same year, he from Hampton Bays and I from Patchogue-Medford, in 2002.

Since he was from Hampton Bays and had played for coaches I had good relationships with from covering high school athletics there — Pete Meehan, John Paga, athletic director Drew Walker, etc. — we both had a sense we kind of knew each other already. And then there was the professional timelines that were aligning. I had just taken over as sports editor of The Press News Group just over a year before when we first met.

As I explained to Mike’s younger brother Christopher DeRosa last week, because of all of that, in some odd yet understandable way, I always felt that our careers and life paths intertwined, which is why when Bridgehampton/Ross varsity baseball head coach Lou Liberatore hit me with the news the night of March 28 that Mike had a brain tumor and was rushed to the hospital just the day prior, it hit me like a ton of bricks. It also explained why Mike was missing from the dugout earlier that day since he’s an assistant coach with Liberatore.

To learn of such news was really unbelievable to me. I had just covered the Bridgehampton varsity boys basketball team’s run to the New York State Championships, which Mike, of course, was there for every part of. I saw him at just about every game we covered this season, which were a lot, and then the multiple games in lead up to the state final. Less than a week before he fell ill, Mike and I saw each and shared a brief hello at a hotel in Vestal, just outside Binghamton. He was rounding up all of the Bridgehampton cheerleaders the morning prior to the boys semifinal game. He seemed totally fine and healthy.

Which is why to learn that it was not only a brain tumor but stage 4 glioblastoma shook me even harder. We here at The Press are all too familiar of that disease. Co-production manager here at the paper Kerri Cunningham, lost her husband, Dean Pace, to it December 2017. He was only 48. I didn’t know Dean for long but in the short time that I did, I still remember him being one of the most fun, kindest and gentlest human beings I have ever met. We here at The Express News Group still hold Dean near and dear in our thoughts every day. And while Neil Salvaggio did not die of glioblastoma, but leukemia, in December 2021, I would be remiss if I didn’t say we think of Neil often and hold him near and dear as well.

Mike, like Dean and Neil, actually, has a similar trait in that he makes it a point to say hello to you and always greet you with a smile. They would all ask, how are you doing? How’s your family? How are your kids? They were often described as unofficial mayors of their towns and hamlets. Lou Liberatore described Mike as such last week, calling him a mayor of Bridgehampton School and Hampton Bays.

Mike is still with us, though, fighting, and while glioblastoma can be a devastating diagnosis, the medical field has seemed to have caught up to it at least a little bit in possible treatments for it. After Mike’s tumor was removed last week, Christopher DeRosa said his family is hopeful that Mike — who currently can not speak and is paralyzed on the right side of his body — can get back to being healthy after some rigorous speech and physical therapy.

So, Mike, if you’re reading this, please keep up the fight. You have entire communities here on the East End rooting for you, and we still have that cornhole story to get to!